NEW YORK — The man who made stars of iconic singers such as Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, and countless others has died.
Clive Davis was 94 years old.
His family said Davis died at home in Manhattan on Monday, but had been hospitalized with respiratory problems recently, The New York Times reported.
Davis’ representative told Rolling Stone that he “passed away peacefully from age-related illness ... surrounded by his family and his loved ones.”
He’s had several health challenges in recent years, including being diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy in 2021. The temporary condition forced him to cancel his annual pre-Grammy Gala, which has been held the night before the awards ceremony since 1975.
Davis was born in Brooklyn in 1932 and raised in the Crown Heights area by an electrician and salesman father and a stay-at-home mother, both of whom died by the time Davis turned 18, within 11 months of each other, according to Rolling Stone.
Losing his parents at an early age made him who he became.
“I had been toughened by my parents dying when I was 17, 18, by going through school as an orphan and having to earn everything,” he said. Davis went to New York University on a scholarship and then, after graduating there, went to Harvard Law, also on a scholarship.
Because he had to keep above a certain grade point average, he had to work hard to stay in school.
“If I didn’t keep up at least a B+, I would lose those scholarships,” he said. “I’m always mindful of performance.”
After graduating from Harvard Law, he went to work for the firm Rosenman, Colin, Kaye, Petschek and Freund, where he reviewed contracts for the talent agency Columbia Artists Management, which was not connected to Columbia Music, the company where he would become president.
“I knew nothing about music,” he said in the documentary “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives,” the Times reported.
Harvey Schein was hired by CBS and brought Davis with him, and he was eventually named head lawyer of CBS’s music division, according to Rolling Stone.
A lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission against CBS showed Davis the other side of the business.
“Because of it, I started to know not just the contractual side but the retail and distribution side,” he said.
Davis was asked by the then-president of Columbia Records to head the company’s instruments division, which made Fender guitars, but was eventually offered the role of president of CBS Records.
At the time, the label promoted artists such as Tony Bennett and Jerry Vale. Mitch Miller called rock juvenile garbage in the 1950s, the Times reported. “It’s not music. It’s a disease,” Miller said.
But meeting with Lou Adler, manager of the Mamas and the Papas, and a trip to the Monterey Pop Festival changed Davis’ trajectory.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was a cultural revolution, a social revolution and clearly a musical revolution,” Davis told Rolling Stone. “I knew I was in the midst of something unique and profoundly deep.”
“[Janis] Joplin was mesmerizing, like a white tornado,” Davis said. He signed her and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. “I prepared to unveil the music in mid-’68 with a campaign that said [that] this is the new revolutionary sound that will be heard around the world.”
Davis then followed Joplin with other acts such as Santana, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel.
He would look at Billboard charts and dug deep into what made a song a hit, trying to match singers with songs that would rocket up the charts.
In the case of Whitney Houston, he said it took two years to find the right music and producers for her first album. The record spawned three No. 1 singles after its 1985 release — “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know” and “Greatest Love of All” — and became one of the most successful debut albums with more than 25 million copies sold, the Times reported.
But despite all of his success, he had speed bumps in his storied career.
Columbia fired him in 1973, suing him, claiming he used $94,000 in company money for personal expenses, including renovating an apartment and paying for his son’s bar mitzvah. Davis said an employee forged invoices without his knowledge.
His name was also part of the “drugola” investigation, where federal authorities set up stings involving drugs and payola in the music industry. Davis said he was a scapegoat to protect CBS and its broadcast licenses.
Davis was not charged in the operation but was indicted on six counts of falsifying tax reports and pleaded guilty to one count of failing to pay taxes, and was given a $10,000 fine.
But he bounced back quickly, The Times said, buying the Bell label, renaming it Arista, and making a No. 1 hit with Manilow’s “Mandy.”
Arista went on to sign artists such as Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Melissa Manchester, and Dionne Warwick, among others.
When BMG Entertainment, the parent company of Artista, tried to force Davis out, Aretha Franklin told The Los Angeles Times, “If Clive leaves, I leave.”
BMG started a new label, J, named for Davis’s middle initial, with him owning 50%, The New York Times reported.
Davis was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He also cemented his legacy with the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at his alma mater, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The program is now known as the Clive Davis Institute.
He leaves behind his three sons, daughter, eight grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his partner, Greg Schriefer, The New York Times reported.
Davis was married twice, to Helen Cohen and Janet Adelberg, but both relationships ended in divorce.
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